What is C++?

C++

C++ (pronounced cee plus plus) is a general-purpose programming language. It has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing facilities for low-level memory manipulation.

It was designed with a bias toward system programming and embedded, resource-constrained and large systems, with performance, efficiency and flexibility of use as its design highlights.

Programming Language

C++ has also been found useful in many other contexts, with key strengths being software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications, including desktop applications, servers (e.g. e-commerce, web search or SQL servers), and performance-critical applications (e.g. telephone switches or space probes).

C++ is a compiled language, with implementations of it available on many platforms and provided by various organizations, including the Free Software Foundation (FSF’s GCC), LLVM, Microsoft, Intel and IBM.

C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the latest standard version ratified and published by ISO in December 2014 as ISO/IEC 14882:2014 (informally known as C++14). The C++ programming language was initially standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, which was then amended by the C++03, ISO/IEC 14882:2003, standard.

The current C++14 standard supersedes these and C++11, with new features and an enlarged standard library. Before the initial standardization in 1998, C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs since 1979, as an extension of the C language as he wanted an efficient and flexible language similar to C, which also provided high-level features for program organization.

The C++17 standard is due in 2017, with the draft largely implemented by some compilers already, and C++20 is the next planned standard thereafter.

Many other programming languages have been influenced by C++, including C#, D, Java, and newer versions of C (after 1998).

Find more about C++

The home of Standard C++ on the web — news, status and discussion about the C++ standard on all compilers and platforms : www.isocpp.org